Kinetic quasi-viscous and bulk flow inertia effects in collisionless magnetotail reconnection
- Electrodynamics Branch, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland (United States)
- Applied Theoretical Physics Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico (United States)
Both electron inertia and nongyrotropic effects were analyzed using 2 1/2-dimensional hybrid simulations of collisionless magnetic reconnection. The traditional hybrid approach which treats ions as particles and electrons as an isotropic massless fluid was modified. In the new model the electron mass dependence was introduced both in the expression for the electric field and in the evolution equation of the full electron pressure tensor. This comprehensive hybrid model includes full ion kinetics, incorporates Hall effects, describes the leading terms in electron dynamics responsible for breaking the frozen magnetic flux constraint and allows to consider arbitrary ion/electron temperature and mass ratios. We demonstrate that the kinetic quasi-viscous electron inertia associated with nongyrotropic pressure effects dominates over the electron bulk flow inertia in controlling the structure of the dissipation region around the neutral X line. The reconnection electric field based on the nongyrotropic pressure tends to reduce the current density and to relax gradients in the vicinity of the X line (similar to the localized anomalous viscosity). On the other hand, the reconnection electric field based on electron bulk flow inertia tends to require an increased current density, with gradient scales comparable with the electron skin depth. The dependence on the ion/electron temperature ratio and on the current carrier also is discussed. An analytical analysis which supports the results of the numerical simulations is also presented. {copyright} 1998 American Geophysical Union
- OSTI ID:
- 610661
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 103, Issue A1; Other Information: PBD: Jan 1998
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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